


By Candle's Light

by sturms_sun_shattered



Series: Rito Chronicles [7]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Happy Ending, egg candling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25250752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sturms_sun_shattered/pseuds/sturms_sun_shattered
Summary: Missing scene fromAge of Intolerance.
Series: Rito Chronicles [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757296
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	By Candle's Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raging_Nerd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raging_Nerd/gifts).



> The night before _Age of Intolerance_ Chapter 26.

“We should candle it tonight, Harth,” Antilli said.

Harth glanced up at Antilli from where he sat on the floorboards at the back of their roost, holding their egg to the thinning feathers on his abdomen. He adjusted his wings around the blanket to cradle it a little more closely.

“Do we have to?” he asked.

This was their seventh egg; the six before hadn’t developed. Eggs were normally first candled after three nights, but Harth couldn’t bring himself to walk down to Misa’s to borrow her candling box. Instead, he begged Teba to let him out of patrol so he could hold the egg for just one more night. If he didn’t know, maybe—just maybe—it could be real.

Harth’s delusion persisted for a fourth night and a fifth. He could see that Antilli was trying to be patient about this, but she had always been far more pragmatic about these things than he had it in him to be.

“Harth,” she said, crouching before him and resting her wings on his thighs, “just talk to Teba, he’ll put you on a patrol, you don't even have to be here.”

“What about you? I can’t leave you alone in this.”

“I can have Saki come over,” she said, “but I can do it on my own if need be.”

“Till, no,” he protested, “I’ll stay.”

“I hate what this does to you.”

Harth shook his head and sighed. Antilli had cried over the first few eggs, but by the fourth she had dug into that well of iron she had somewhere inside of herself and let it harden around her heart. Harth still cried every time—it was his fault, after all. This time, he told himself, he would be strong; he would show Antilli that he could could keep himself together and support her through this as much as she did him.

“I’ll go to Misa’s,” sighed Harth, as he carefully handed off the egg to Antilli.

Harth wound his way down to the shop as the evening sun cast long shadows across the boardwalk. He ducked his head and walked quickly past Kass an Amali’s roost—not wanting the sight of their happy arrivals to set off that sickening piece of envy that had buried itself in his gut.

When he arrived at the Slippery Falcon, Misa had already packed away her wares for the night.

“Sorry, Harth,” she said, “you don’t need me to remind you the hours I keep.”

“I didn’t come to shop,” he said.

The silence lengthened between them as Misa pushed a chest back to its place beneath the wares table and straightened.

“Well, what then?”

“I need to borrow your candling box.”

“Really? Again?”

Misa was hardly known for her tact at the best of times, but she seemed to wear the pain of being recently widowed as a shield against criticism. Harth was not entirely sure he blamed her. He nodded and she sighed as she dug a polished wooden box out from under another of her wares tables.

“Perhaps this will be the one,” she told him as she handed it to him.

“Perhaps,” said Harth opaquely as he stared at the open circle in top of the box.

“Return it tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah,” Harth agreed distractedly as set out from the shop.

Harth was grateful that it was the hour when most Rito took their evening meal and he would not run into anyone on the boardwalk. He didn’t think he could bear to speak to anyone when some tiny part of him still held onto hope that perhaps, _somehow_ this egg might not be empty.

“Do you want to to eat?” Antilli asked as he returned and set the box on the floor in the middle of the roost.

“I”m not hungry,” he said.

Harth sat down beside Antilli held out his wings to take the egg back.

“You’ve been holding it all day, are you sure?” she asked.

“I’m sure,” he said.

As he held the egg close, he worried that he was somehow saying goodbye to something that never was. He dreaded what would come tomorrow—to lay another egg to rest in the caves might be the thing to break him.

“I don’t want to try anymore after this,” Harth told Antilli, “Kaneli and everyone else be damned.”

“That would be a relief to me as well,” she agreed.

As night fell, Antilli drew the curtains around the roost to block out the light of the moon. Harth rested the egg in the hole at the top of the box. He could already feel the tears that he had sworn he wouldn’t shed building in the corners of his eyes. Antilli lit a squat tallow candle and slid it into the box.

Harth blinked, unable to believe his eyes as the candle shone golden from below to fill the egg with warm light. Their creation was not a shell of clear albumen, but full of life—blood vessels spidered out from the tiny spot in the centre where their chick was growing.

The tears that Harth had been holding back broke through as he glanced at his wife to see that she, too, had fallen to her unexpected happiness. She pulled Harth toward her and nudged her beak against his. Harth laughed a little as he held her, unable to even form words for his delight.

“We did this,” she whispered, “this is ours.”

“I know we should be cautious,” he whispered, “but in my whole life, I’ve never been so glad as I am in this moment.”

As Antilli lifted the egg from the box and held it to her for warmth. Harth wrapped a blanket around both her and their miracle as the settled at the back of the roost, together in their bliss. As Antilli’s head dropped onto Harth’s shoulder in sleep, he reached out and rested his wing over hers, feeling the shape of the egg beneath the blanket and feathers.

“You are already so loved.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Raging_Nerd,
> 
> I'm sorry I can't give you Genik back and continue to break your heart. Please accept an attempt Harth and Antilli fluff and my apologies that I front-loaded with angst; I am not a fluff writer.
> 
> Your Friend,  
> sturms_sun_shattered


End file.
